Cookbook is great. But I cant get any results out of the Python console

[dave-melillo]

First and foremost, forgive me, as I am new to Python. The cookbook included in the book is great, but I want to dump the results to a CSV file and it is proving very difficult. Below I have what I thought was a simple request to export all friends/followers to a csv. I can get the export to work, but it's illegible. I am not simply looking for the answer, but rather a long term solution I can apply to whole cook book. Any suggestion is appreciated. Thank you.

import sys
import time
from urllib2 import URLError
from httplib import BadStatusLine
import json
import twitter
from functools import partial
from sys import maxint
import csv

def oauth_login():
    # XXX: Go to http://twitter.com/apps/new to create an app and get values
    # for these credentials that you'll need to provide in place of these
    # empty string values that are defined as placeholders.
    # See https://dev.twitter.com/docs/auth/oauth for more information 
    # on Twitter's OAuth implementation.

    CONSUMER_KEY = ''
    CONSUMER_SECRET = ''
    OAUTH_TOKEN = 'L'
    OAUTH_TOKEN_SECRET = ''

    auth = twitter.oauth.OAuth(OAUTH_TOKEN, OAUTH_TOKEN_SECRET,
                               CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET)

    twitter_api = twitter.Twitter(auth=auth)
    return twitter_api

def make_twitter_request(twitter_api_func, max_errors=10, *args, **kw): 

    # A nested helper function that handles common HTTPErrors. Return an updated
    # value for wait_period if the problem is a 500 level error. Block until the
    # rate limit is reset if it's a rate limiting issue (429 error). Returns None
    # for 401 and 404 errors, which requires special handling by the caller.
    def handle_twitter_http_error(e, wait_period=2, sleep_when_rate_limited=True):

        if wait_period > 3600: # Seconds
            print >> sys.stderr, 'Too many retries. Quitting.'
            raise e

        # See https://dev.twitter.com/docs/error-codes-responses for common codes

        if e.e.code == 401:
            print >> sys.stderr, 'Encountered 401 Error (Not Authorized)'
            return None
        elif e.e.code == 404:
            print >> sys.stderr, 'Encountered 404 Error (Not Found)'
            return None
        elif e.e.code == 429: 
            print >> sys.stderr, 'Encountered 429 Error (Rate Limit Exceeded)'
            if sleep_when_rate_limited:
                print >> sys.stderr, "Retrying in 15 minutes...ZzZ..."
                sys.stderr.flush()
                time.sleep(60*15 + 5)
                print >> sys.stderr, '...ZzZ...Awake now and trying again.'
                return 2
            else:
                raise e # Caller must handle the rate limiting issue
        elif e.e.code in (500, 502, 503, 504):
            print >> sys.stderr, 'Encountered %i Error. Retrying in %i seconds' % \
                (e.e.code, wait_period)
            time.sleep(wait_period)
            wait_period *= 1.5
            return wait_period
        else:
            raise e

    # End of nested helper function

    wait_period = 2 
    error_count = 0 

    while True:
        try:
            return twitter_api_func(*args, **kw)
        except twitter.api.TwitterHTTPError, e:
            error_count = 0 
            wait_period = handle_twitter_http_error(e, wait_period)
            if wait_period is None:
                return
        except URLError, e:
            error_count += 1
            print >> sys.stderr, "URLError encountered. Continuing."
            if error_count > max_errors:
                print >> sys.stderr, "Too many consecutive errors...bailing out."
                raise
        except BadStatusLine, e:
            error_count += 1
            print >> sys.stderr, "BadStatusLine encountered. Continuing."
            if error_count > max_errors:
                print >> sys.stderr, "Too many consecutive errors...bailing out."
                raise

def get_friends_followers_ids(twitter_api, screen_name=None, user_id=None,
                              friends_limit=maxint, followers_limit=maxint):

    # Must have either screen_name or user_id (logical xor)
    assert (screen_name != None) != (user_id != None), \
    "Must have screen_name or user_id, but not both"

    # See https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1.1/get/friends/ids and
    # https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1.1/get/followers/ids for details
    # on API parameters

    get_friends_ids = partial(make_twitter_request, twitter_api.friends.ids, 
                            count=1000000)
    get_followers_ids = partial(make_twitter_request, twitter_api.followers.ids, 
                                count=1000000)

    friends_ids, followers_ids = [], []

    for twitter_api_func, limit, ids, label in [
                    [get_friends_ids, friends_limit, friends_ids, "friends"], 
                    [get_followers_ids, followers_limit, followers_ids, "followers"]
                ]:

        if limit == 0: continue

        cursor = -1
        while cursor != 0:

            # Use make_twitter_request via the partially bound callable...
            if screen_name: 
                response = twitter_api_func(screen_name=screen_name, cursor=cursor)
            else: # user_id
                response = twitter_api_func(user_id=user_id, cursor=cursor)

            if response is not None:
                ids += response['ids']
                cursor = response['next_cursor']

            print >> sys.stderr, 'Fetched {0} total {1} ids for {2}'.format(len(ids), 
                                                    label, (user_id or screen_name))

            # XXX: You may want to store data during each iteration to provide an 
            # an additional layer of protection from exceptional circumstances

            if len(ids) >= limit or response is None:
                break

    # Do something useful with the IDs, like store them to disk...
    return friends_ids[:friends_limit], followers_ids[:followers_limit]

# Sample usage

twitter_api = oauth_login()

# Open/Create a file to append data
csvFile = open('result667.csv', 'a')
#Use csv Writer
csvWriter = csv.writer(csvFile)

friends_ids, followers_ids = get_friends_followers_ids(twitter_api, 
                                                       screen_name="davecandoit", 
                                                       friends_limit=1000000, 
                                                       followers_limit=1000000)

csvWriter.writerow([friends_ids])
csvFile.close()


print friends_ids
print followers_ids
)